Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 721 



amples of this kind are the tents, the umiaks, certain small belong- 

 ings of the kaiak and weapons (straps, eyelets, toggles), the hunters' 

 drag-lines and small wound-plugs (of bone) for the slaughtered seals, 

 their dresses and snow-goggles, the women's bodkins, needles and 

 thimble-guards, their hairdress, many of the utensils in the house, 

 drying-frames, lamps, vessels, bone forks and spoons, drums, child- 

 ren's toys etc. Most of these objects belonging to the daily life are, 

 it is true, not quite the same from place to place; but the small 

 deviations in the forms from the different districts have been effaced or 

 intermingled, especially in the districts of old colonization, so much 

 as to be of hardly any use in seeking for contributions towards the 

 elucidation of the connection of the groups or their distinctness from 

 one another. 



It is quite different with the features special or partly special to 

 the Ammassalik district, which connect alternately with the northern 

 (high-arctic) or southern (subarctic) cultures of the same coast or with 

 the similar divisions of West Greenland. I may summarize them here. 



The houses occupied by the Ammassalikers during recent gener- 

 ations are mostly long houses for 8 or 10 families. This is a house- 

 form which is in several respects quite the reverse of typical for the 

 Eskimo and its introduction presupposes a complete revolution of 

 the original social condition. The origin of this change can hardly 

 be ascribed to the forefathers of the Ammassalikers but it is presum- 

 ably connected somehow with the fall of the Norse-Icelandic colonies 

 in South Greenland and thus dates from about the year 1500. Both 

 the expanse and rectangular ground-form of the houses may have 

 been due to imitation of the Norse houses and the quantities of large 

 pieces of drift-wood in the sea have rendered the building of such 

 houses possible '). In the districts, where the long-house type now dom- 

 inates, the Eskimo private house was combined with the original 

 meeting or assembly house (qasse); indeed the long-house replaces 

 or implies a whole village or fishing community. The Taawin com- 

 ing from the north, who at Ammassalik must have adapted them- 

 selves to the communal mode of living, which came from the south, 

 were previously only accustomed to the small huts containing but 

 one or two families and often built near together in small groups, 

 like fishing hamlets. Ruins at Ammassalik show, that the small 



1) According to Valtyr GuSmundsson, Privatboligen (1889) pp. 92—93 and 212—213, 

 the ground-plan of the Icelandic houses in the saga period was rectangular. 

 Walls and roof were made of sod and stone and drift-wood. There was a broad 

 platform along the walls for the inhabitants to sit on or sleep on, and the 

 sleeping platform Avas divided in several compartments, as in the Eskimo houses 

 in South Greenland. 



XXXIX 46 



